Antibody-Caspases Fusion Protein

As a professional service provider in antibody discovery and production, Creative Biolabs offers comprehensive antibody-caspases fusion protein service for targeted immunotherapy with optimized enzyme and antibody conjugation strategies. Our customarily tailored services and high-quality products will contribute greatly to the success of your projects.

Caspases

Caspases, which also known as cysteine-aspartic proteases, is a family of protease enzymes playing crucial roles in programmed cell death including apoptosis, pyroptosis, and necroptosis. They have specific cysteine protease activity. There are 11 or 12 caspases have been found in humans, and 10 in mice by 2009, exerting various cellular functions. These enzymes were found to have an important function in programmed cell death. The form of programmed cell death appears in development widely even throughout life for maintaining the cell homeostasis. Some other roles of caspases have been identified subsequently such as cell proliferation, cell differentiation, tumour suppression, axon guidance, and aging and neural development and so on.

Fig.1 Routes to caspase activation in the intrinsic pathway to apoptosis. (Adrain, 2006)

Antibody-Caspases Fusion Protein

Caspases are a kind of enzymes involved in the induction of apoptosis. Recently, they have been investigated as effector moieties in fusion proteins known as “immunocaspases”.

For example, fusion proteins have been constructed with the anti-ErbB2 antibody (referred to as HER2) fused to an active caspase-6 enzyme with a Pseudomonas exotoxin A (PE)-translocation domain to facilitate internalization. The caspase-6 enzyme usually operates in sequence with other caspases to induce apoptosis. However, it was shown possible to genetically alter the caspase to enable direct cytotoxic activity upon PE-mediated translocation into the cell. The anti-ErbB2-PE-caspase-6 fusion protein demonstrated potent killing of approximately 94% of ErbB2⁺ human Jurkat cells in vitro. Furthermore, when the fusion protein was administrated in vivo, using a liposome-encapsulated gene therapy approach, the tumoricidal effect was evident in mice expressing human tumor xenografts and was shown to greatly inhibit metastasis and increase the survival rate.

Fig.2 Schematic diagram of caspase-6-based gene constructs. (Xu, 2004)

Creative Biolabs is committed to helping you develop antibody-caspases fusion protein in a timely and cost-effective manner. We also provide our customers with a wide range of antibody-enzyme conjugate services. Please contact us for more information and a detailed quote.

References

1. Adrain, C.; Martin, S. J. Double knockout blow for caspases. Science. 2006, 311(5762), 785-786.
2. Xu, Y. M.; et al. A caspase-6 and anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (her2) antibody chimeric molecule suppresses the growth of her2-overexpressing tumors. Journal of Immunology. 2004, 173(1), 61-7.